The present invention relates to dental devices and equipment and more specifically to endodontic dental devices for irrigating and treating root canals and other dental surfaces.
When performing endodontic treatments, care needs to be taken to adequately prepare the root canal for the treatment or procedure. The root canal should be thoroughly debrided to remove and reduce the number of organisms within the root canal and, also, to properly shape the root canal.
Because of the intricate nature and shape of a root canal, cleaning and treatment of the root canal can become a tedious task. Conventional rotary and hand-held instruments have not been able to reach all of the small areas within the root canal. To overcome these deficiencies, devices have been designed that incorporate ultrasonic energy into the irrigating needle used in connection with the instrument for root canal debridement.
While such needles have been shown to increase the efficiency of root canal treatment processes, there is still room for improvement. Specifically, such ultrasonic powered needles have not been adequately incorporated into endodontic irrigation equipment. Irrigation equipment and devices were separately used and designed from the debridement devices. Thus, while the devices potentially could improve root canal processes, the ultrasonic systems have been separate devices from the endodontic systems. The extra equipment may make it hard to navigate while performing a dental procedure. It would be advantageous to provide tools and equipments that would incorporate and include both irrigation and debridement instruments into a single system, with the capability of ultrasonic energy being available. Such a device would allow for more efficient dental processes, both in time and how the operation is performed.